Gardeners are well aware of the damage to plants, flowerbeds, gardens, and lawns that rodents such as moles, voles, and mice can cause. Because of this damage, many people seek to keep rodents away from their gardens and lawns and to be rid of those that are already there. However, people often do not want to trap the animals because of the complexity of positioning a trap, baiting it, checking the trap, removing any caught animals, and then resetting the trap. Traps may also pose a danger to persons or non-pest animals Furthermore, traps that kill the animal are often considered inhumane, gruesome, or otherwise inappropriate solutions to the problem.
One way to combat this problem is by way of rodent deterrent stakes. These devices are generally driven into the ground where they emit sound, ultrasonic frequencies, vibrate, or some combination of those to discourage rodents from occupying the region near the stake or array of such stakes. However, these rodent deterrent stakes often resulted in devices with unsatisfactory battery life and decreased sound output as battery power is expended. In addition, higher frequencies of some alarm and distress calls do not transmit easily or uniformly through soil or around obstructions and are, therefore, not readily detected in burrow conditions. Furthermore, the types of sounds generated are eventually ignored due to habituation and, therefore, the rodent deterrent stakes become ineffective. Therefore, there exists a need to modulate the sounds to exhibit characteristic rates and duration of documented calls of actual rodents.
Therefore, there exists a need for a non-lethal device to repel rodents from gardens, lawns, and the like that amplifies the sounds created by the device or reduces the effect of the factors that dampen the sound. There further exists a need of a device that is least likely to become ineffective due to habituation.